h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The idea of turning into an anorak was bothering me a bit. Pleased to meet and 'unashamed' one. Now I can relax and if it happens to me, I won't feel ashamed either.

Some aspects of political correctness have been positive. It's good that the orcs come in all sorts now. Even though it seems extremely unlikely that Tolkien meant to imply that the orcs were in any way to be associated with any human race, the possibility of offending whole ethnic groups and turning people off an excellent story, called for an adjustment. Now model soldiers, human and orc of every hue, can massacre each other bloodlessly, with only good and evil in contention.

This won't be news to you, AgProv - but I have to tell anyone else interested in what Tolkien meant, that there have been a few surprises (for me at least) in The Lost Tales, so far:

1) Sho might remember I was wondering some way back in this thread, why the elves reproduce so slowly. Well, it turns out that the elf population is meant to remain unchanged for the whole period of their physical existence. Tolkien said " ... the Eldar dwell till the Great End unless they be slain or waste in grief (for to both of these deaths are they subject), nor doth eld subdue their strength, except it may be in ten thousand centuries; and dying they are reborn in their children, so that their number minishes not, nor grows." So Tolkien's elves would never have the problem of over-populating the planet or overusing the planet's resources. What a good idea.

2) The "planet" where Middle Earth is located, is not (or wasn't at the time Tolkien first conceived it) a sphere. It was more like Terry Pratchett's disc world, except the oceans weren't overflowing the edges of the world (and there were no turtles or elephants). Tolkien drew a rough picture of the his world and it looked like a Viking ship. To me, it looks like a large bowl of water with another, smaller bowl, also containing water, floating in it. The inner bowl looks thicker at its west and east edges, thereby forming the land of Middle Earth in the East and the land mass where Valinor is situated in the West.

Well, I thought it was interesting!

I don't care if I'm an anorak
although, I don't really have the time to devote to Tolkien's work that I'd like. My poor hubs had almost forgotten (until the films came out) just how much I love LOTR and to a lesser extent The Silmarillion. I've read a few of Tolkien's other works, but a long time ago, so I'm looking forward to whatever it is hubs has got me for Christmas.

My DVD hasn't arrived yet. however, I think it will be here next week - but since it's a crimbo pressie, I have to wait to watch it. And it's me without the DVD player. Well, I actually got one (it was a pressie from a friend) but my TV doesn't have the right sort of connection (only scart) the DVD has s-video. So, the girly who gave me the DVD player, is sending me a cable that will work.


I remember in the Silmarillion feeling sad that the elves didn't have babies, but it wasn't until I saw the film of TTT that I thought about it some more (because of the elves at the battle of the Hornburg). I like the idea that they are born on the anniversary of their conception date though. That's cool.

<--- sorry, couldn't resist.

I wonder about the PCifying of novels though. Sometimes I think: good, we don't want to propagate that racist nonsense. But then I think: but the prevailing views at the time were.

btw, Shorn, I haven't yet started Beowulf, but it looks pretty ok from what I've seen. Very short though.

Maybe you wouldn't mind if I pop over to your Personal Space sometime so we can talk about it?

On the subject of Orc colours - I note that you say there are *no* black or brown Orcs! I think that may be at least because there is *huge* racial sensitivity and a fair bit of simmering but polite aggro going on in NZ *all the time* about racial issues... PJ may have been exercising uttermost caution...
Last night I sat down with the paperback movie tie in of the book. (My son immediately took it off me after having got bogged down with Tom Bombadill back in January and not reading it any further. In other words, he got interested after I read excerpts - the encounter with the Balrog for one...)
My point is, I was looking for references in the book to the colours of Orcs. Up 'til the arrival of the Fellowship at Lothlorien, I had found only three.
1. An "Orc chieftain" was described as wearing *black armour*, and having a 'swart' skin tone. I leave it to people living in Britain to tell what *they* understand by 'swart'.
2. The Orcs firing on the party from the riverbank are described as 'black figures' but in the context, I took that to refer to their distance (on the riverbank.)
3. I sadly, can't remember - but I am reasonably sure JRRT did *not* specifically describe them as Black.
(My son says the black he envisages is that of 'Bog Bodies' such as Tollund man - not that of people generally called Black. I think it's a good point!)
I raise this because I do believe that accusations of racism/sexism or classism against Tolkien are absurd and we he alive, he'd find them amusing and insulting.

>>2) The "planet" where Middle Earth is located, is not (or wasn't at the time Tolkien first conceived it) a sphere.<<
Fascinating! I must tell Jimmy a.s.ap!

To the guy who said before about where middle earth was suppose to be said (carny or summat)

Tolkien wrote the trilogy in a folklorish style, and used elements of things like the canturbury tales to give the story an old worlde style. This was because he wanted middle earth to be a mythology for enland. Looking at englands past we have no mythology. The greeks have heracles, the romans had ... people.. and so on and so forth (even the northern countries have beowulf). As someone said before, Tolkien saw this time as the sixth or seventh age.

He wrote it as a mythology for England. Simple as that.

"swart" - English "swarthy", from Swedish / Scandiwegian "svar", "svart", meaning "dark".

(In Nordic mythology you get phrases like "Svartalfharheim", or "home of the dark Elves")

I'd interpret "swarthy", in the English sense, as meaning "darker of skin", but not African. I've seen the word used to describe people of meditterranean or Gypsy appearance - olive-skinned or deeply tanned.

The problem, alas, is not so much what Tolkein meant as what people read into the words. The parellel is Alf Garnett (if you're British) or Archie Bunker (if you're American). The character was devised to be an appalling ill-educated ignorant bigot with hair-raising racial opinions; it was hoped the character's views would be seen for what they were because he was so obviously an ill-educated ignorant bigot. Most people got the joke, but an alarmingly large minority didn't, and saw Alf as a spokesman for their own opinions...

...so if somebody comes to Tolkein who might already lean towards racism or White Supremacy, they'll read a reflection of their own opinions into it. For a mindset like that, three quotes describing Orcs as "black" would be ample.

Apologies, I should have made myself clearer in an earlier posting. I was looking at a photospread of character models based on the film, and I didn't so much say "there are no black orcs in Tolkein's book or the film thereof" as "in this photo of model figures created and painted by Games Workshop, there are no orcs depicted as having black skins that could be confused with afro-Carribean skin types".

As a modeller / wargamer, it interested me to compare the current generation of figures based on Tolkein with the LoTR figures available twenty years ago - where the prevailing wisdom was "Orcs are black. period".

Thanks for your clarification about 'swart'. (It's a word almost never used in NZ - I knew it had to be related to German/Dutch/Scandinavian languages.)
I never when reading Tolkien thought of the Orcs as black (certainly not Afro-Caribbean) and when I have seen the films, I find it hard enough to tell what's going on (Orcs are always in action scenes) as it is without worrying what they look like!
I like Jimmy's idea that they are the black of Bog Bodies... it seems very appropriate.
Your comment about the action figures/gamers' models was very appropriate.

I always think of Orcs as being sort of grey - probably got them confused with the little underground fellas from The Silver Chair when I was a kid - and the Uruk Hai as being really big greyish orcs. With flappy feet, long fingers and pointy ears (so I almost definitely got them more than a little mixed up with Gollum when I read the Hobbit) Funny how those images persist.

When I read "Swart" I make the connection with Swarthy, and I (and again, this could just be me, or it could have a basis in fact) connect it with old descriptions of Gipsys. Which is to say: dark skinned, but not black, with dark hair. Probably a bit long and wavy if not curly. And certainly disreputable.

But really, is it so non PC to relate darkness to bad things? In the dark we can't see, and that means we're automatically wary, if not downright scared if we hear/feel things that we can't see. If the orcs/Uruk Hai come from caves and inside mountains, possibly they're just "swart" because they're filthy?

Sho
1) Re 'PCifying of novels. Nobody is going to mess with the novel. The film doesn't follow the book exactly and the orcs have taken on some colour variation, among other things. The model soldiers have too. But the book stays the same and people debate what was meant - that's all, so don't worry

2) Yes, pop over for a chat about Beowulf. I won't be starting it for a few days, but if you get there first feel free to hold forth.

3) Amazon will soon be delivering a DVD about pirates and featuring a certain elf of whom you're fond.

Della
'Swart' isn't a word most Brits would know the meaning of, because it's not used. I've never heard it used. I doubt it's in even the passive vocabulary of most Brits, never mind their active vocabulary. I looked it up and found - swart: " or swarth adj (archaic or dialect) black; dusky; blackening, hence, malignant, baleful ...". I agree with AgProv about people who are racist, grasping at any hint of what they can (mis)interpret as support for their irrational views. Also, as Sho says, we're rightly wary of the dark for good evolutionary reasons. Tolkien just follows the pattern as far as using darkness as a sign of evil. There is an irony about the use of dark skin in that context though. If light is good and dark is bad then making creatures that avoid the light dark is inappropriate. People who spend more time in the sunlight have darker skin and people who avoid sunlight tend to be very pale. In which case: dark good, pale bad. Ho hum.

For anyone interested
Here's another item of wonder from Lost Tales. Did you know that Melko (Morgoth, the first Dark Lord), had a son? I didn't. His son was called Kosomot and was also known as Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs and Gothmog's mum was called Ulbandi. Well, just thought you might like to know.

Only place I've ever seen swart or swathy used are in books, and not any recent books either. I always thought it was supposed to be a reference to stature, which shows how wrong you can be if you try to guess meanings from context.

Swart rhymes with short.
Swarthy rhymes with Dorothy (at least in the dustin Hoffmann film, Toots).

Well i got my tickets today to see return of the king .

To be honest, i cant see why people complain about lotr for being racist. For a start the uruk's themselves are described as being ultimate footsoldiers of middle earth. Plus if you look back on history there is a lot of racism (crusades mainly)

Yet ive never heard anyone complain about Zulu. Funny that.

>>which shows how wrong you can be if you try to guess meanings from context.<<
Yes, that can always be a trap, sometimes with amusing consequences...

Shorn: I don't worry with anyone messing with the book as such, but I worry that it might be taken out of school libraries along with some other classics.

green with jealousy about your DVD... I'll just have to wait.

And I've decided to re-read the Silmarillion after Beowulf. To see if I can finally like it.

Is LotR in school libraries? Lucky kids. I can't remember finding anything like that at any of my schools. Still, on the other hand, the kids can't be that lucky if they're in the power of people who would ban a book like Lord of the Rings from school libraries because of some mistaken beliefs about the author's views on race. Now I come to think of it, I always did loathe school. The ones I went to seemed to be more about brain-washing and social engineering than education. No doubt there are still plenty of that sort. You mentioned earlier in the thread that the book helped to get you through difficult school experiences, well it helped me in a similar way. My family moved house when I was 14, to an area about 150 miles away from friends and family. New school, strange accent and the same old family situation (suffice to say, difficult) and I was the only kid left at home. One of my brothers left his copy of LotR behind and I found the huge great breeze block of a book and started reading it. I disappeared into it and never wanted to come out. No wonder I love it. And it's no wonder that so many people love it. It should be in school libraries.

Can't wait to get on to Beowulf but the only time I have more than one book on the go is when I get bored with what I've been reading. I stopped about half-way through book 9 of the Wheel of Time series because I just couldn't take any more. Looked as though it was going to just keep going for ever. It was when I saw book 11 advertised that I lost heart and started reading A Game of Thrones instead. A story should have some sort of ending - preferably in a foreseeable future.

I'll be watching that film some time this weekend. Should be good .... but not as good as watching The Return of the King on a big big screen, like that smug Jedi

*ignores everyone who will see ROTK any time before me*

Isn't it amazing how many people used LOTR (initially) as a refuge from othr stuff? For me it was a boarding school that I joined in the 2nd year, friendships & cliques had already formed, and there was a well established tradition of each form picking on and bullying the year below. It took well over a year before I even began to think about forming friendships.

Without a doubt, if I hadn't had LOTR (thank you Prof T) telling me that it is ok to stick to your guns and do what you believe is right, I'd have given up and (most probably) had a really really miserable time. as it was, eventually it turned out to be not so bad, but by then my real best friends were Aragorn Legolas and Gandalf.

"..It's only JiveTolkien.."

lol!

*sits patiently waiting for someone to write 'Tolkien is hobbit forming' all over the thread*

The Big Read:
Lord of the Rings WON Lord of the Rings WON Lord of the Rings WON Lord of the Rings WON Lord of the Rings WON !